Former Ontario premier Dalton McGuinty told police investigators that records management in his office was ultimately the responsibility of his former chief of staff, David Livingston, who is now under investigation for breach of trust in relation to the deletion of gas plant emails.

In court filings released Friday, OPP anti-rackets detectives detailed an April 15 interview with McGuinty, in which the former premier declined to be audio recorded. Police have said McGuinty is not a suspect in their investigation.

The documents were filed to request a court order for Queen’s Park visitor logs mentioning Peter Faist, an off-the-books computer technician enlisted to allegedly wipe hard drives clean and hide the true cost of the gas plant cancellations, now pegged at $1.1-billion.

Detectives, led by Supt. Paul Beesley, allege that Faist used a super-password that had been specifically created to access every computer in the former premier’s office without leaving a digital footprint.

Police also allege that Faist used WhiteCanyon software on the premier’s office computers. The software is commonly used by the U.S. military to wipe all data while leaving the operating system intact.

Some staff recalled in police interviews that they were introduced to Faist as the boyfriend of Livingston’s deputy chief Laura Miller, who has since been hired as the executive director of the BC Liberals.

The filings reveal that Faist’s work was “sole-sourced” by his girlfriend when she was executive director of the Ontario Liberal Party, from 2010-11.

There was no written contract between Faist’s company, NetCon1, and the Ontario Liberal Party.

Simon Tunstall, the executive director of the party, told detectives that the party office sole-sources work and does not use the request for proposal process, saying, “We’re not a government so we don’t have any obligations, we have no legal obligation to do RFPs or anything like that,” according to the affidavit filed by police.

The police are seeking visitor logs from the Legislative Assembly recording the name Faist between June 1, 2010, and March 30, 2014.

Invoices reviewed by police show that Faist’s company received $57,036.08 from the Ontario Liberal Party and $167,072.28 from the Liberal Caucus Service Bureau for services across the four-year period in question.

The Ontario Liberal Party stopped using Faist’s services in March, shortly after the last police filings were made public.

For his part, McGuinty told investigators he was unfamiliar with records-management policies and stressed the “verbal” nature of communication in his office.

“McGuinty did mention that the chief of staff is ultimately responsible for all the activities that take place in the Premier’s Office, including records management,” reads the document.

“The deliberations that I and my staff bring to bear on these written materials are oral. We rarely if ever exchanged written arguments against each other,” McGuinty told police.

Detectives also asked McGuinty if he had any meetings with senior staff during the transition period to the Wynne government. The former premier acknowledged he had such meetings but that finding records of them might be hard because they didn’t keep them.

“We did not record decisions at meetings of senior staff. From time to time, some staff members would make a note, but by and large they were oral.”

Livingston is the only named suspect in the case so far. His lawyer has said his client “did nothing wrong and certainly did not break the law as alleged.”

The OPP investigation continues and no one has been charged. The allegations against Livingston have not been tested in court.

It comes after a stinging report by Ontario’s Information and Privacy Commissioner, Ann Cavoukian, who concluded that records laws were broken.

The commissioner said she found it hard to believe his staff wasn’t deleting key gas plant emails inappropriately.

“Having regard to all of the information gathered, while I cannot state with certainty that there was an inappropriate deletion of emails by the former premier’s staff as part of the transition to the new premier, it is difficult to escape that conclusion,” the commissioner said.

The commissioner said the failure to comply with records-retention laws, coupled with a “culture of avoiding the creation of written and electronic records,” helped explain why there were so few emails in response to freedom-of-information requests about the true costs of the political decision to cancel the gas plants.

The Ottawa Citizen published a series of articles between June 5 and 17 referring to former Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty.

Some of the articles falsely implied that Mr. McGuinty was the subject of an Ontario Provincial Police investigation. Mr. McGuinty is not the subject of any police investigation and we wrongly left this false impression with our readers by not reporting that fact in each story.

The articles also wrongly stated that the OPP was investigating the relocation of two gas plants. In fact, the OPP are investigating an alleged breach of trust. All three political parties supported relocation of the gas plants in the 2011 election. The OPP are not investigating the decision to relocate the gas plants.

Mr. McGuinty faithfully and honourably served the people of Ottawa South for over 23 years as MPP and as Premier.

While the media can, and sometimes should, disagree with a decision made by an elected official, their duty is to convey accurate and true information.

The Citizen regrets having published these false implications, and sincerely apologizes to Mr. Dalton McGuinty, his wife Terri and his family for all harm caused by these articles.